


Depth and Breadth and Height

by dietplainlite



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Established Sherlolly, F/M, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:36:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dietplainlite/pseuds/dietplainlite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not so much a story as a character study.  Same universe as "Unnamed Things."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Depth and Breadth and Height

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lono](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lono/gifts).



Sometimes she is still in awe of him. She thinks this might be a little unseemly, in a woman as independent, as educated, as competent as she. But sometimes, when her guard is down she will catch a glimpse of him, napping on the sofa, his mouth relaxed and soft, brow smooth, and her heart will swell painfully, her chest too small to contain what it means to love him. Sometimes, she will look at him at just that moment where all of the pieces of information in his head converge into an answer to a puzzle and it is electric. And other times, when he wakes her in the night and whispers that he needs her, she gives him everything she possibly can and knows, after, when he goes to get her a glass of water and holds her until she falls asleep, that it is enough.

She loves to watch him make tea. He is exacting and precise and it is always perfect. She drinks it in the morning with the sun streaming through the street side windows, and in the evenings with the light of the fire that is almost always needed in his draughty flat. And sometimes he doesn’t speak for hours but the tea is always just as she likes it.  
She cannot resist, sometimes, covering him in kisses when she hasn’t seen him for a day or two or twenty. He protests but accepts it and returns it and then tells her he missed her, even if it’s only been a day.

He sweats in his sleep, something she was surprised to learn. Not a lot, just enough to make his forehead glow and wreak havoc on the curls he spends more time trying to control than she’d ever imagined. She’d thought, in her more girlish of imaginings, that he woke each morning looking as though he’d come fresh from a brand new package. The reality of his wakening, the stubble and the creases and the tangled hair, is far sexier. 

And they fight. The first time it happens she is sure that it is over and ruined. That it is the fighting and the making amends that will make him wake up and realize how truly distracting and complicating this thing, this sentiment, this feeling is. But it is not the end, merely a turning point, and he doesn’t leave. In fact he won’t ever leave things unresolved, because he knows what a final volley tossed behind you as you walk out the door can mean when it ends up being one of the last things you ever say to someone. So she has spent nights crying in his arms, still angry at him but crying in his arms because he won’t give up until he has made it better. She doesn’t know why she didn’t expect this, considering that he is unrelenting in his pursuit of any goal. 

And in the grey, quiet hours of the morning that she used to find so unbearable because she was so alone, he is there. Even in his silences. Even when he is absent. Her heart beating a steady rhythm. “He is mine.”


End file.
